The dining-room presented a very dreary appearance.  Neither the captain nor any of the officers of the Roland were present, the demands upon them in such bad weather being too severe to permit them to leave their posts.  The tables had been provided with a wooden apparatus dividing them into small compartments, which prevented the plates, glasses and bottles from slipping any distance.  Nevertheless, there was much breaking of crockery, and it required all the skill of the stewards to serve the dishes, especially the soup.  From the kitchen and the china room every now and then came the sound of a tremendous crash.  There were scarcely twelve people at table, among them Hahlstroem and Doctor Wilhelm.  After a time the skat players, as usual, came bursting in, talking noisily and red of face.  Their winnings were immediately transmuted into Pommery.  Notwithstanding the fearful weather, the band was playing.  There seemed to be something frivolous, almost challenging, in the playing of music when, at short intervals, the Roland would come to a quivering standstill, as if it had run upon a reef.  Once the illusion was so strong that a panic arose in the steerage.  Mr. Pfundner, the head-steward, brought this explanation of the horrified shrieks that had penetrated the dining-room above the noise of the raging waters, the rattling of the plates and the blare of the band.

At dessert Hahlstroem left his place at the other end of the room and, balancing himself with difficulty, came over to Frederick and Doctor Wilhelm, and asked permission to seat himself beside them.  He seemed to have been drinking whisky, as he had dropped his natural shell of reticence.  He spoke of hydrotherapy and gymnastic exercises, and called himself a quack.  It was the gymnastics, he said, that had given his daughter the idea of taking up dancing.  As if to challenge the others, he elaborated bold philosophic theories, dealing out one wild statement after the other, each of which would have been a trump sufficient to end the game for ten German Philistines.  To believe his own word, he was a terroristic Anarchist, a white-slave trafficker, an adventurer always.  At any rate, he espoused the cause of all who were Anarchists, procurers, or adventurers.  He argued in all superiority, upon egotistic grounds, calling these the intellectuals, and all others, creatures without brains; in which his philosophy showed some similarity to Frederick von Kammacher’s new philosophy, now that Frederick had entered upon a new phase of his life.

“America,” said Hahlstroem, “is known to have been settled by rogues.  Were you to spread a tent over America, you would have the most beautiful, the most comfortable penitentiary in the world.  The natural form that survives and triumphs in America is the great rascal, the great Renaissance idiot.  In fact, it is the one form that will triumph throughout the world.  You’ll see some day how the great American rascal will get the whole of